Gina Svoboda notices the state of the economy during routine grocery runs.
“Things are so expensive,” Svoboda said. “Basically, my grocery order is the same as it has been for the last 30 years. So, in let's say 2005, my grocery order was $35. This same grocery order is about $150 today. How could people live on that?”
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Svoboda, 57, of Hunlock Creek in rural Luzerne County, a Desert Storm veteran and a Republican turned Democrat, said the economy tops her list of concerns.
Svoboda was one of 207 people who responded to WVIA's latest online survey. The survey allows voters to express their top concerns and the results were integrated into a Keystone Edition program on the upcoming election that will air Monday at 7 p.m. on WVIA-TV.
WVIA News voter issue survey
The survey results, while not scientific, paralleled scientific state and national polls.
The majority who filled out survey forms were 60 to 78 years old and almost 80% identified themselves as registered Democrats. Survey respondents could name as many issues as they wanted as most important to them.
The top five issues named were health care, 78.3% of respondents; cost of living/inflation; 77.3%; environment, 70.5%; data centers at 69.6%; and economy at 68.6%.
Pa. voters' top issues
The August Franklin & Marshall College poll of Pennsylvania voters showed almost a third of voters (31%) named economic issues as the most important problem facing the state today.
Economic issues have dominated elections for years. High inflation under President Joe Biden was a major reason President Donald Trump won a second term in 2024.
“If you're going into an election year and you want to guess what the top issue is going to be, the economy is a safe start,” Democratic political consultant Brittany Crampsie said during WVIA’s Keystone Edition program that will air 7 p.m. Monday on WVIA-TV. “People are going to vote with their pocketbooks. These are the things that are top of their minds.”
Other issues arise, such as abortion in 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned the right to have one, Crampsie said.
“But voters almost always come back to these pocketbook issues,” she said. “How much am I making and how much of it is going out the door in gas, groceries, and utilities? So, you're seeing that in every single race, certainly up here, but in every corner where there's a competitive election, the candidates are talking about their vision to address the affordability crisis.”
Appearing on the same program, Republican political consultant Chris Nicholas didn’t disagree.
“Two years ago it was the economy, but a different subset. No one now is talking about jobs or unemployment because we're at pretty much full employment,” he said. “We are talking about costs, okay? And one of the reasons people see their costs going up is they don't buy dishwashers every week, right? So, I couldn't tell you what the price of a dishwasher was, but we've all filled up our car in the last week, and we've all gone to the grocery store … So you see these costs going up incrementally every time you do your gas and your groceries, and that becomes top of mind.”
Hot congressional races in WVIA's backyard
Both candidates in the hotly contested 8th Congressional District race have sought to integrate attention to economic issues into their campaigns. In interviews, both highlighted high gasoline prices, worsened by the war in Iran.
“I feel for my grandmother who called me last week and she said, 'look at these gas prices,'” U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, the Republican nominee, said, urging President Trump to end the war in Iran. “And I can't pretend to not be empathetic to that. It's a real concern.”
Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, the Democratic nominee, said Trump has never explained clearly enough the reasons for a war that Bresnahan supported.
“We see the gas prices are $4.49 or above. We see diesel over $7. I've visited multiple farms just in the last couple of weeks,” he said. “Those diesel prices are really, really hurting farmers on top of fertilizer prices. And my husband's in food. I see him having to figure out how he's going to deal with those prices. He doesn't want to pass on those increased costs to his customers either.”
The economy also factors into the more rural 9th Congressional District race between incumbent Republican Rep. Dan Meuser and Democratic challenger Rachel Wallace.
Meuser and Wallace are addressing those economic issues.
“Hardworking Americans deserve an economy where a paycheck covers the bills, buying a home is within reach, and small businesses have the opportunity to grow. Delivering lasting relief means keeping taxes low, cutting unnecessary regulations, controlling government spending, and making more of what we need here at home,” Meuser’s campaign website says.
Wallace promises to lower health care costs, reverse the Medicaid cuts Meuser voted for, target health-care system consolidation that limits competition and drives up costs, boost unions and update “outdated laws that keep farmers from being competitive and profitable.”
A recent poll focused on rural voters.
KFF's poll of rural voters, a Trump stronghold
The poll found about half believe the economy is worse off than before President Donald Trump reentered office last year. They named their top economic concerns as groceries, gas prices and health care costs.
“Many of these rural voters are experiencing worsening financial hardships … These dynamics have led to some of these voters, including Republicans, feeling disaffected with Trump and the Republican Party,” said Alex Montero, senior survey analyst for the Public Opinion and Survey Research Program at KFF.
Rural voters tend to skew Republican and have made up a large part of Trump’s voting base. However, KFF’s poll found these voters’ frustration with the economy could lead to lower turnout for rural Republican voters.
“So if that dynamic holds in the coming months, right, we could see that having an impact on some tight races across the country,” Montero said. “Again, not because Republicans are defecting to the Democratic Party, but because dissatisfaction with Trump on the economy is reducing the amount of Republican rural voters who turn out in the election.”
Voters in their own words
Svoboda's home in rural Luzerne County is a place where she can appreciate nature and open space. She also pointed to the environment and data centers as issues that will drive her to vote this November.
“I love Northeastern Pennsylvania. I love the fact that we have mountains and clean rivers and clean lakes … Well, all of that could be impacted by these data centers,” she said.
Mary Ann Paulukonis, 81, a resident of North Abington Twp. in Lackawanna County, described herself as an atypical Republican.
“More and more in the last decade or two, certainly the last decade, I have tended away from voting Republican. It used to be if I didn't know a candidate or didn't know either candidate well or couldn't decide between their policies, I'd just automatically vote for the Republican," Paulukonis said.
"Now, one of the reasons that I prefer to vote by mail is because I can get the ballot ahead of time, and I can go through and research every single candidate for every office, whether it's a judge, whether it's somebody in my local township,” she said.
Like the other voters, Paulukonis ranked the economy and cost of living high on her list of issues.
“There are things I've noticed we're paying three times as much as we paid for a few years back. I think we're managing all right. We probably cut back on a few things, but we're very thrifty to begin with, so we never were people who went out and bought T-bone steaks, so we can't cut back on those things and we don't have to live parsimoniously,” Paulukonis said.
In his retirement, registered Independent voter Al Sever travels often from his Williamsport home. The retired Department of Environmental Protection engineer, a Vietnam War veteran, walked the iconic Camino de Santiago in Spain seven times, but plans for an eighth for his 79th birthday this year remained uncertain.
“Where I spend my money is mostly on travel, and yeah, flights are going really high again. In fact, they're projecting as of yesterday to expect flights to increase by 60% by the spring because of what's going on in the Middle East,” Sever said.
Sever described himself on the survey as a Democratic Socialist, but said he does not identify with either party.
“I don't trust either one. I really do not. I don't think there's any difference between the two,” he said.
